Rumors are all around for the much hyped ‘G – Drive’. Initially people said G-Drive will become a part of Gmail and will help the users to store emails, documents and pictures etc. Now it all turns to ‘Google Docs’ as the Google Docs Product Manager Vijay Bangaru announced the storage options.
Google Docs now offers 1 GB of free storage and users can purchase more for $0.25/GB. Being in the backup business, we do come across questions on how Google offers raw storage at such a low price point and the same kind of price point is not being offered for online data backup. The reason is that there is a significant difference between raw storage and data backup. What Google charges ($0.25 / GB) is just for the raw storage and there is no intelligence to the storage. Data Backup is lot more than raw storage as there is a backup application which intelligently processes the data and ensures data protection with the help of features like versioning, file retention, customized restore process etc. On top of that a backup application offers a completely automated process with protection for millions of files with sophisticated motoring, reporting and management features to identify problems if any and troubleshoot quickly. So it is actually an apple to orange comparison when you compare Data Protection and Raw Storage.
An analogy to the above situation is a SaaS based CRM service. Ultimately even for the CRM service it is about storing data. But CRM services are never priced based on the raw storage as the value is in the intelligence of the CRM application.
Many say G-Drive, the mother of all storage, will be released soon and will result in the end of all online backup companies. But as I said earlier, data backup differs significantly from raw storage. For online data protection applications raw storage is just one component of the whole solution and the significant value lies in the intelligence, convenience, the ease of use and automation it offers in backing up large number of files along with the monitoring, reporting and management features it offers to identify issues and troubleshoot quickly. Hence we feel that G-Drive will simply be one other storage option for a full data backup service rather than being something that will obsolete the online data backup industry.
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